Tag Archives | ET

There’s been a rumor for decades that video game company Atari buried tons of unsold copies of its legendarily bad video game ET in a, Alamogordo, New Mexico dump. While Atari spokespersons at the time did confirm that they had dumped some material there, they described it as largely consisting of defective equipment (as opposed to defective ideas for video games). Now, entertainment company Fuel is planning to excavate the site to see what’s really under all of that New Mexico dirt.

Superficially, the story itself is little more than smirk-worthy. Even people who grew up playing the 2600 might only barely remember the ET game, and the history of video games based on movies is rife with missteps. Historical archaeologist Paul Mullens isn’t content with a superficial examination, instead taking a wider perspective on the activity in a short essay, which you can find at his blog.

Nevertheless, there is something archaeologically telling in the popular allure of the project, and it is almost certainly that 30-year narrative about the ET game that a digital marketer would recognize as compelling.

During an epoch of dramatic climate change 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) evolved in Africa. Several leading scientists are asking: Is the human species entering a new evolutionary, post-biological inflection point? Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines. Not only are machines better able to endure extended exposure to the conditions of space, but they have the potential to develop intelligence far beyond the capacity of the human brain.

“I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe,” Davies writes in The Eerie Silence.

The Geopolitics of Alien Intervention

…Or a question of whether you feel like you’re being watched?

By Micah Hanks

If aliens were to invade planet earth, what might be their reason for doing so? Also, how might they do it, and would we be able to defend ourselves?

Admittedly, we see this scenario quite often in films, and it’s almost always the result of the same, predictable sorts of patterns we’ve watched ourselves fulfill throughout history as humans, super-imposed onto the silver screen. These involve mean-assed aliens that consider planet Earth a disease-ridden mudball crawling with parasites; we, of course, are those parasites, and the aliens arrive as intergalactic exterminators to save our otherwise lovely terrestrial landscape from its bothersome residents. Another popular one: they’ve destroyed their home planet, and now the alien squatters have arrived to establish themselves like cosmic family members going through hard times, begging to crash on the couch for just a few weeks.… Read the rest

A new survey is under way to search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life, but this one has a twist: Instead of listening for alien signals from anywhere in the sky, scientists are aiming radio telescopes at the alien planets most likely to be like our own Earth.

The new search, which began last week, is scanning 86 alien worlds for radio signals that could suggest the presence of an advanced civilization. The extrasolar planets are thought to be the most Earth-like of the 1,235 candidate planets discovered so far by NASA’s prolific Kepler space observatory.

“We’ve picked out the planets with nice temperatures — between zero and 100 degrees Celsius [32 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit] — because they are a lot more likely to harbor life,” said physicist Dan Werthimer of the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement.

This new SETI search is not part of the SETI Institute, which has long served as the Earth’s ears for any signals from intelligent aliens.

Scotland. Known for medieval castles, highlands, islands, clans, kilts and one large lake where a legendary beastie, the Loch Ness Monster, allegedly resides.

But for decades, Scotland has also been home to another mystery yet to be resolved: UFOs.

The country that occupies the northernmost section of Great Britain has its share of UFO reports, including an unusual pear-shaped object reported recently by a motorist on the UK UFO Sightings website.

On the night of Jan. 2, in the East Kilbride area of Scotland, George King wrote: “I was sitting in my car, facing west, when I noticed two orange lights — one smaller than the other — flying low.